Sit Down, Shut Up: FOX Pulls Animated Series, Essentially Cancelled?

Published: May 15, 2009

FOX tried to pass off Mitchell Hurwitz’s new animated series as an apology for cancelling the much-loved but little-watched Arrested Development. Unfortunately, though some of the talent might be the same, Sit Down, Shut Up clearly isn’t in the same league.

Sit Down, Shut Up is an animated comedy that revolves around the teachers and administrators at John Muir High School in Gainesville, Florida. Based on a live-action show from Australia, it stars the vocal talents of Will Arnett, Jason Bateman, Will Forte, Tom Kenny, Nick Kroll, Kristin Chenoweth, Cheri Oteri, Kenan Thompson, and Henry Winkler.

The series has received overall negative reviews and poor ratings. The premiere attracted just 5.21 million viewers with a 2.3/6 among adults age 18-49. In week two, Sit Down, Shut Up fell to 4.2 million and a 1.9/5. FOX then moved it from Sundays at 8:30pm to 7pm. To no surprise the numbers got even worse.

Should Sit Down, Shut Up be cancelled?

Though there’s little chance that Sit Down, Shut Up will be back for a second season, FOX didn’t even want to wait for the show to finish its first. They’ve pulled the fifth scheduled installment, titled “Math Lab,” from Sunday’s schedule. The action may be due to ratings, the episode’s content (a meth lab), or a combination of the two. In any case, the network hasn’t made any indication that the show will return anytime in the future.

There are reportedly 13 completed episodes of Sit Down, Shut Up, so this leaves nine episodes unaired. With that many on the shelf, FOX may burn them off sometime in the future or, more likely, or they could just forget about them.

The network sometimes posts extra episodes online so they may show up there or they’ll eventually show up on DVD, likely once the public has had a chance to forget the negative reviews.

Sit Down,Shut Up is totally the best and hilarious show since it was first shown.The characters were absolutely funny,not to mention some of them remind me of myself.It’s kinda a combination of Family Guy and The Simpsons,but still WHY would they just cancel the show,I was just looking forward into enjoying Sunday evenings!!!!!!!

Look some shows just plain suck. Even if talented people come up with the ideas and talented writers write for the show. There is just nothing funny about a show trying to be like other animated shows out there. To me it just shows how much of a sell out mitch hurwitz is.

i wish people would just give mitch hurwitz a real chance on this. i mean i think he’s earned it…ya know, creating one of the best comedies that’s ever been on tv and all.

and one of the best aspects of his writing style are subtle repeated jokes and self references, which come from watching over time. but of course, people are just faaaaaar too impatient to actually let something grow a bit, and now it looks like it won’t even get to go past 4 episodes. so my point’s moot anyway. it’s just kind of a shame.

ps – it’s weird to hear “a whole lot of weird and awkward conversations” cited as a reason something WASN’T funny. that’s kind of the definition of funny to me.

This show is great. IF people ‘hate’ it to the pint they need to start lobbing insults and using extreme language (look below this post) that tells me they are doing something right. I LOVE shows that get this reaction. That people outright ‘HATE’ it is exactly why I LOVE it. There are plenty of people who find the cleverness in this show hidden so intricately behind the fart an genital jokes to be very entertaining. It’s hardly the worst animated series on the air, and it’s definitely better than about 70% of the TV I see. Of course that’s not saying much. But it is what it is and I would LOVE to see more.

This show is the worst thing I think I’ve ever seen on t.v. I love animated comedies but this is a waste of time. Not funny AT ALL. The humor is lame and I kept waiting around to see if there was ever going to be a real joke or punchline in the entire episode and I got a whole lot of weird and awkward conversations. It was just plain stupid. This piece of s^it belongs in the garbage and teh creator of the show needs to admit that this was a piss poor attempt at a series. I couldn’t belive that I was watching a pilot that actually convinced executives to put it on television. Horrible.

I started watching the show from Day 1, and I thought it was funny. To most who think of this show as another cartoon that didn’t deserve the use of being on TV is but another set of people just begging to pan something they’ll NEVER give any positively recognizable value to.

Sure it may have it setbacks with the people, but this show reminded me so much of the storyline & (the attempt to ruin the) plot like The Tick cartoon series from the 1990s. Shows like that don’t ever come about this decade, and I’m sure they’ll be as rare as ever come the 2010s. But I loved Sit Down, Shut Up so much, it might as well be yet another canceled cartoon that Will Forte voiced for like he did Clone High back in 2002-2003.

If anything, the smartest idea was to have put this show on Adult Swim, and see where the ratings go from there. Just like PoKeMoN, Yu-Gi-Oh, 6Teen, Futurama, Family Guy, & American Dad, this show would be one more from another network that will soon rake in more than it’s missing share of viewers, let alone the chance of there being a Season 2 in the mix. If Kids WB/Kids CW, YTV/Nickelodeon, & FOX can pitch their shows to Cartoon Network/Adult Swim(aside from Futurama later becoming part of the Comedy Central schedule) & make them popular again, then why not do that with Sit Down, Shut Up???

Sit Down, Shut Up is yet another God, The Devil, & Bob…meaning, it only lasted very little time on the air, became very low in the ratings, and got panned by a lot of people. Going from a religious spat about a cartoon show in the year 2000 all the way up to an unwatchable show that no one had ever gave much of a chance to see that was literally funny to some who got the idea behind the story & whatnot in 2009 is just more baffling than ever.

If this were on YouTube, it’d get a lot of views, just in the same as Adult Swim would. But to have FOX put it on there 3 times & NOT give it much credibility to the point of finding it on a Wal-Mart shelf for as little as $10 is NOT the way to go. I’m sorry, but Sit Down, Shut Up deserved WAY BETTER…and the better of it would be ADULT SWIM.

If Turner Broadcasting is looking at this comment right now, they should do it, and hopefully BRING BACK SIT DOWN, SHUT UP!!! For realz.

thats what fox gets…
they cancel the GREAT King of the hill for this crap, a show that they wont even let finish out its entire 1st season..
i bet the same thing will happen to the neeeeext family guy spinoff “the cleveland show”.., it will tank miserably.

From the moment I saw the show, I knew it would be canceled. Rarely does one see a cartoon of this caliber on air, let alone network TV. Maybe they should think about Comedy Central where they do a show about a meth lab, which is the supposed theme for episode 5. Anyway, I love this show and will miss it dearly. PS, they should bring back Arrested Development.

These people who critique these shows which are funny and more witty than the basic family comedy crap are so up themselves, only taking on the opinions of stuck up journalists who rarely praise anything not to the liking of their genre. Some guy actually repeated a paragraph from the miami herald when i asked what was not good about it. Make each channel divided into 2, one for the reality not reality show lovers who love their programs to be exactly the same as each other. Good show shame the critics latched their claws on so quick.

God I’m depressed. After 4 shows? The pilot was a little weak, but geez . . . the rest of the episides struck high on an essentialist scale and even higher on a relative scale . . .see the rest of the crap on TV? This needs to come out on DVD I tuned in last Sunday and was so irritated . . . this was a unique show and if those 9 unaired episodes stay in the can, I’m gonna raid Fox with a ragtag team of fanboys.

The 4th Episode was the best one! I thought the show was great. You can’t expect to be blown away by watching one episode of a new show. Especially one with so many characters. Mitchell Hurwitz is one of the most brilliant writers in TV today and the reason his show got cancelled is becasue people don’t give things a chance. I think Sit Dow, Shut Up had potential to be something amazing. I myself am not big on animated shows but I had a feeling that the AD humor would come out in the show and pull me right in, which it did. I look forward to seeing what Mitch does next, and of course the AD movie.

I caught the first episode on Hulu. The cold open was great, but it was downhill from there, fast. On a friggin rocket sled. I have not watched any other episode and feel, like the author posited, like Sit Down, Shut Up’s initial pickup was more of an apology for past wrongs than anything else. Like the equally baffling Dollhouse renewal.

The minute I finished watching the pilot episode, I knew immediately that it was going to be cancelled by the time it ended it’s first season.I was right, because it’s completely polarizing -some people hate this show, yet I found it really, really funny at times (at least the first episode was). I dunno how I feel, just because it should be put out of its misery and it didn’t even come close to living up to its potential. But at least it’ll be a cult hit come a year from now when people discover it on DVD.